by M. G. Harris
I’m seething with rage, wondering what to do with it. Obviously I can’t storm off. Ixchel stares up at me as if she’s never seen me before.
“But there’s another possibility.”
Distracted, I say, “What?”
“You said that we might have crossed into another timeline. A parallel reality, where things in Mexico are a little different.”
“So?”
Ixchel stands up, facing me. She grabs my hands. “Maybe you don’t exist in this reality.”
“Oh, great.”
“No . . . but think about it! If it’s possible for someone using the Bracelet to end up in a parallel reality . . . then maybe Arcadio is a future version of you . . . but from another parallel.”
I take a few seconds to process that. A parallel world where I don’t exist – Martineau talked about that. Ixchel’s right, though – if using the Bracelet can take you to different realities, then who can say where Arcadio came from? He might share my last name, might know all that stuff about me, might have my genetically altered blue eyes.
But that doesn’t actually make him me.
With that one comment, Ixchel manages to brush away a fear that had clawed its way into my heart. Only now do I realize how crushing the worry had become, the idea that my life was already mapped out and I had no say. I can hardly believe how relieved I feel.
Arcadio does not have to be my future.
From the position of the sun in the sky and the stifling heat, I estimate that it’s early afternoon. Once we’ve eaten all the food, our conversation slows down. I’ve lost all sense of urgency to be open about my feelings with Ixchel. In fact, I can’t work out where I stand with her right now. OK, so we’ve sorted out part of the Arcadio issue. But there’s still the Benicio thing. Plus the fact that I’m running out of ideas.
I mean, what the heck do I have to do to get her to fall for me? You’d think that saving her life over and over would be enough. But no. It’s not as if I’m asking for much. Right now I’d settle for way less. Like for her to shut up about Benicio for at least a day.
The question of what to do next is unavoidable. We’ve got almost no money – sixty pesos in a place where a few snacks sets you back by one hundred and forty. The phone to Ek Naab doesn’t work, at least not here. Ixchel doesn’t even have shoes.
Then there’s the small matter that we may well have zapped into a parallel reality in which things are different. Maybe we don’t exist here. Maybe no one we know does.
How different could things be?
The last “different” timeline I remember was Ek Naab when I left it. It was almost identical to the world I grew up in. But in that reality Tyler hardly knew me – we had never become good friends.
This time, Mexico itself is actually different. I don’t want to think through everything that could mean, definitely don’t want to talk to Ixchel about it. Talking about it makes it seem more real.
We need food, a safe place to rest. We can’t call Ek Naab; we need another way to get there. These are the kind of problems I can handle.
All of these things require money, which we don’t have. But Ixchel’s arms are covered in gold bangles. Rare Mayan jewellery that was being offered up along with her, to the Mayan gods of ancient Calakmul – the Snake Kingdom. That’s got to be worth something in modern Mexico. The only issue is – how do we find a buyer?
“We could start at the museum in Chetumal,” Ixchel says when I mention the jewellery. “It’s a big Mayan archaeology museum, right on the main street.” She starts to remove the bracelets, very carefully. We’ve nowhere to put them so she sits down and tears a strip of fabric from the hem of her white linen tunic, wraps the bracelets within the fabric. She keeps one on each wrist. “To show the museum,” she says. Then she hands me the linen pouch full of Mayan jewellery. I pull on my jeans and socks, which are almost dry. I fasten Ixchel’s makeshift bag to a belt loop. The Bracelet of Itzamna sits hidden in my front jeans pocket, never more than a few centimetres from my hand.
Chetumal is around twenty minutes’ drive from Bacalar. We talk about how to get there. I could walk but Ixchel can’t, not without shoes. The bus might just be affordable. Safer than hitch-hiking, too. But then we’ve blown all our cash. I fill the two empty guarana bottles with lake water. It tastes a bit reedy. Like cold, weak tea.
Without another word we both start walking towards the lakeside road. From there it’ll be another few minutes to the main coastal highway.
We reach the highway in twenty minutes. The heat and humidity stifle any idea of conversation. Walking alongside Ixchel I get to thinking about all the time we’ve spent walking next to each other. About how we’ve talked over what we’re doing and what problem we’re trying to solve. Hardly ever about anything fun or light-hearted. Never mind one of those deep meaningful conversations that girls seem to want to have right before they let you touch them. I haven’t quite got the hang of that kind of talk.
So after about ten minutes I’m pretty surprised to feel Ixchel reaching for my hand. We don’t say anything; we don’t even look at each other. But for the rest of the way we walk with our hands firmly clasped, fingers interlocked. After a minute or two it feels completely natural.
The weather is a killer. Ixchel doesn’t complain but it can’t be easy walking barefoot on this hot tarmac. Neither of us mentions it but the highway looks different too. It’s not the dual-carriageway, fancy new road that I remember riding along with my sister, Camila. Just a single carriageway road, like most of the highway up to the big tourist city of Cancun. We find a bus shelter and wait. After a few minutes we’re joined by a couple of petite young women carrying bulging, colourful straw laundry bags. Ixchel asks them what the fare to Chetumal is. “Fifty pesos,” says one, staring at Ixchel curiously. Ixchel turns to me with a look of desperation. I can see at a glance that she needs to get off the road. I return her gaze.
“You get the bus. Go to the museum and wait for me. Then your feet won’t hurt.”
The two young women step back and look into the highway. The bus rolls along. I give Ixchel the sixty pesos and reluctantly let go of her hand. She leans forward and plants a kiss on my cheek, right next to the corner of my mouth. She steps on to the bus, I move back, grin and give her a little wave, thinking that we might look like a couple who’ve been going out for ages.
The walk to Chetumal is pretty brutal. There’s no shelter from the sun, almost all the way. I think about hitch-hiking at least fifty times, when cars stream lazily past. Only the thought of some mishap puts me off. I keep thinking about Ixchel. How she’s here because of me and that stupid relic, the Bracelet of Itzamna, which has brought me nothing but hassle and grief.
What did I do to get in this situation? This time, I really think it’s all Montoyo’s fault. There was no way I was going to start messing around with the timeline, not after what happened when I tried to save my father. I couldn’t save him; I may even have been the reason why he ended up on Mount Orizaba with amnesia.
Meddling with time is unpredictable. I knew that.
I thought Montoyo was crazy all along, even wanting to risk it. It never, never occurred to me that he would trick me. Weirdly, though, I can’t find it in my heart to blame him. For Montoyo, anything is fair in the battle against the Sect of Huracan. I’m his soldier, his pawn.
He may have a thing for my mother but he is never going to replace my father. My dad would have risked anything to save me. With Montoyo, nothing is personal. It’s all about 2012.
I check my Ek Naab phone every ten or fifteen minutes. Nothing, not the tiniest whisper of a signal. I cling to the hope that the Ek Naab of this timeline must have developed a different kind of phone technology, and mine won’t work.
It’s too awful to think that the problem is anything more serious than that. Is the lack of signal from Ek Naab connected to Marius Martineau’s arrival there? I try to think through the scenarios that could have followed Martineau turning up in Ek Naa
b. In my imagination, none of them turn out well.
After four hours I’ve drained both the bottles that I filled with lake water. My clothes are soaked with sweat. I’m hungry, thirsty, tired and hurting from the stab wound.
A motorbike speeds past and I stare at the rider longingly. No helmet, shoulder-length hair straggling in the breeze, a green Mexico national football team jersey flapping around his chest. What I wouldn’t do to be that guy right now.
I pass a road marker that says its five more kilometres to Chetumal. The sun is rapidly dropping in the sky; the heat is fading too. Two more hours of walking? It seems unbelievable. I knew that heat and humidity slowed you down but this is pathetic. I’ll be wrecked by the time I walk into town. Probably too late to join Ixchel at the museum.
I get to wondering how much money we could get for all the Mayan bracelets. A thousand pounds? That should be enough to get us to Ek Naab, one way or another.
I don’t let myself think about what we’ll do if we can’t get back to Ek Naab. Some ideas are just too horrible. Instead I think about the hotel room, the cool evening swim and the amazing meal we’ll buy when we get some money. I cook up this little fantasy that I’m on my way to meet Ixchel for our first proper date; that we’re going to get a really fancy dinner with candles and tablecloths and stuff, steak and chips, cheesecake with ice cream, strawberries and chocolate sauce. Then we’ll walk to the seafront and stroll along holding hands. We’ll stop under a tree and one of us will start the kissing. The technicalities of how this is going to happen are a bit annoying to think about after a bit, so I stop worrying about it and just skip ahead in my mind to the bit where we’re actually kissing. An hour passes by very nicely, thinking these thoughts. I don’t even feel too tired and my feet and the various cuts and bruises hardly bother me.
What’s Ixchel been thinking about while we’ve been apart? I bet she’s been worrying about the bad stuff. If only I could persuade myself that she’s been dreaming about me.
It’s dark when I arrive in Chetumal and street lamps light up the buildings with a sour white glow. The town looks different, that’s for sure. The same mixture of shabby modern low-rise, painted concrete block and glass-fronted buildings with the occasional slightly more glitzy small hotel or monument. Even I can tell that they aren’t in the exact same places. Heading into town from the coastal road, I get a strange feeling of disorientation. Nothing is quite where I remembered it being. Until I reach the hospital and then the church – buildings that I do recognize.
First a bed, some food, some rest.
The big Mayan museum is more or less where I remembered – opposite where the Dolphin Hotel was, in my Mexico. I glance across the road glumly, hoping against hope that the hotel is still there. But instead there’s an ice-cream parlour. No Hotel Delfin. Anxiety gnaws away at me. It’s a sense of disconnection so deep that I really can’t bear to face it.
What if I don’t exist here? No me, no Mum or Dad, ever. How could something like that have happened? What else would it mean?
I don’t recognize Ixchel when I first see her. I only notice that a cute girl in a yellow and white sleeveless dress with long, loose hair is waving at me. There’s a chunky pale green, lime ice lolly in her hand. The minute we make eye contact she grins. A huge grin, delighted. She stands up and rushes to me.
“You might want to stand well back,” I say about half a second before she tries to hug me.
“Wow. You need a shower!” She’s full of smiles; her hair smells of green apples. With a hand over her mouth to mask a laugh, she hands me the ice lolly. I grab it and bite off so much that within two seconds I’ve got a lime-flavoured blast of ice-cream headache.
“Ow.”
She laughs even harder. “Poor Josh! I’m so, so sorry. Kind of a long walk, huh?”
I mock-smile. “Oh yeah, it’s a cakewalk. Whatever that is.”
“Is it like that other thing you sometimes say . . . a ‘walk in the park’?”
“Yeah, that’s it. It’s a picnic.” I mime looking at a watch. “A mere six, seven hours. It’s boiling hot, too, did you notice?”
Ixchel laughs. “At least you’re in a good mood.”
With breathtaking ease I say, “It’s because I’m so glad to see you.”
There. I didn’t even have to force that out. Ixchel seems to notice. She does this quiet, rapid intake of breath. “I’m glad to see you too.”
To distract my eyes, I look down at her feet. Two crisp white canvas tennis shoes with little red flashes and short white socks. “You got some shoes!”
“Oh yes I did.” She grins widely. “I got some stuff for you too, at the covered market. I figured you’d be too tired to go shopping.”
“Aw, honey, you bought me clothes? Baby, you are so sweet.”
I’m on fire. Being drop-dead exhausted has turned me into a flirting machine.
Suddenly Ixchel’s hands are on my waist. There’s a teasing smile on her lips. “That’s right, ‘honey’, I bought you clothes. Now, it might not be exactly what your mama buys, but. . .”
“Hey!” I say, pretending to frown. “My mum so doesn’t buy my clothes. . .”
The mention of my mother threatens to bring a serious edge to our conversation. I like Ixchel this way, teasing and flirting with me. I don’t want that to stop. So I change the subject. “You sold those two golden bracelets?”
Ixchel tugs at my damp T-shirt. “I sold them for a lot. Josh, you have no idea how valuable they are.” Her hand goes to the linen pouch. “We can sell the rest of them too. This jewellery, Josh – it could change our lives.”
She leads me down the street to a hotel owned by Sanborns. It’s a really famous restaurant and department store chain, but I don’t remember them having hotels. I’m also fairly certain that there was no Sanborns Hotel in the Chetumal I knew.
Inside, behind the reception desk, there’s the familiar Sanborns logo, the outline of three owls on a perch with a new moon dangling in the background. The three receptionists wear the usual old-fashioned uniform with colourful, hoop-patterned long skirts and brightly coloured matching collars.
“Did Sanborns own hotels?” I whisper to Ixchel as we breeze through the lobby, trying to act as if we own the place.
She doesn’t look at me but shakes her head. “Our room is on the first floor, overlooking the pool,” she says.
“Where’s the Internet café?”
“I was going to tell you about that. There’s no Internet.”
“Wi-Fi in the rooms, then? Maybe we can borrow a laptop.”
Ixchel turns to me. “No, Josh, there’s no Internet. In this version of history, there is no network of computers called ‘the Internet’. Or anything like it. I asked as soon as I got to town. People looked at me like I was crazy! No mobile phones either.”
I stop walking. “No Internet? No mobile phones?!”
“I don’t even know if they have computer networks here. None of the hotels I saw were using computers for the checking in and bills.”
I’m silent for several seconds. “You’re joking.”
Ixchel shakes her head. “I’m not. And there’s something else. I called Yucatan University, trying to get hold of Carlos Montoyo.”
“And. . .?”
“They never heard of him.”
There’s really nothing I can say. It’s almost too staggering to take it, yet I have to. This is the reality of time travel, I guess.
Go with the flow.
Inside the room the twin beds are spread with pink-, orange- and white-striped woven blankets stretched over white cotton sheets and pillows. There’s a chest of drawers, two matching chairs and bedside tables, all made of cherry wood. No TV, which surprises me. A bunch of plastic flowers in a blue glass decorates the chest of drawers and on the whitewashed walls hang two watercolour paintings of old Mexican colonial-style churches. Above Ixchel’s bedside table there’s a small piece of framed embroidery.
On the bed nearest to th
e balcony window Ixchel has laid out two pairs of knee-length shorts, one khaki and one bright purple, and a packet of boxer shorts, still in the wrapper. There are two flowery Hawaiian shirts and one traditional white guayabera shirt. Under the bed on the brown marble floor is a pair of leather sandals.
I empty my pockets, pulling out the Bracelet of Itzamna and my Ek Naab phone. Ixchel picks up the Bracelet and the linen parcel of Mayan jewellery and locks them into the room’s safe with a stout key. I take one of the Hawaiian shirts and stare at Ixchel. “Orange? Tell me you’re kidding.”
She giggles. “What?! I like it.”
“When have you ever seen me wear anything like this?”
“I haven’t and it’s about time you tried. I’m bored of grey, green and black.” Ixchel steps forward and gives me a little shove in the chest. “The shower. Then we can swim.”